


your heart is a prison

by girljustdied



Category: Skins (UK)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-01
Updated: 2012-12-01
Packaged: 2019-10-08 16:12:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,314
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17389574
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/girljustdied/pseuds/girljustdied
Summary: there’s a name you keep repeating.





	your heart is a prison

**Author's Note:**

> alt series 7.  
> prompt was “and her eyes dart 'round and fall on the ground, and her lips move along to an old country song. down south you will find among the high pines, an old liquor store where we danced on the floor.”

Six more months staring him straight in the eyes.

Bloke next cell over tells him to make everything a unit of time. No window in his little one-room palace, no sun rising and setting, don’t matter. Weight room, thirty minutes. Mess hall visits, forty-five minutes apiece. Wank, seven minutes—fifteen if he’s feeling fancy.

Not Cook’s nature, though. Too much arithmetic.

Picks at the scabs on his knuckles and thinks about Effy at that funny farm, and the four walls around her, and the different ways they’d make her feel depending on her mood. Wonders if finding out what happened to Freddie earned her more months inside.

It’s easier, serving time, knowing that she is, too.

Don’t mean he’s not buzzing at the word that she’s there to see him.

Girl’s a picture of tranquility there on the other side of the table. Got more weight in her face, on her bones. Looks good on her. Like if he held her, maybe she wouldn’t slip through his fingers.

“Clozapine,” Effy offers when he doesn’t do anything but look at her. “Fattens me up for the harvest.”

“Oink oink.” Makes her smile. “Your tits look crackin’.”

“Still brawling with anything that moves?”

“Huh?”

Her fingertips almost touch his knuckles across the table, spidering out but stopping short. Long nails—she’d stopped biting them. “Naomi says that you have six months left in here.”

“Something like,” he resists the urge to move his hands to his lap under the table so that he doesn’t have to look at her looking at them.

“Sounds nice,” she says, and means it. “Think you’ll make it?”

“Well, you know me, princess. I acclimate well.” And then at the tenderness in her gaze, “You’d think being cooped up would mean too much fucking time to think about Freds, but it’s sorta easier like—”

“I don’t want to talk about that.”

Fair enough. That’s easier, too.

He marks a notch on the wall near his pillow with the single pencil allowed in his room. Does that every time Effy visits. After three marks, his time’s up.

Pretty easy math, all considered.

-

Calendar on the wall reads Thursday. Same as any other day. Pills, then coffee and cereal. Almond milk. Shower, lather, razor—careful. Can hear Naomi’s alarm blaring from her room across the flat, earlier than usual.

Oh. Thursday. Thursday, singular.

“For fuck’s sake, Effy, how do you do this every morning?” Naomi looks like shit, eyes lidded and hair a mess.

“You just get used to it, I suppose.” Feet slipping into a pair of heels, “Can get used to anything.”

This is what is it to be human; Naomi doesn’t agree—this is par for the course.

6:44, at the door.

“Should we wait on you for supper?”

Effy puts her hand on the knob for some sort of support. Says, “I’ll text you.”

“If you didn’t want him here, you could have just said—”

“It’s not that. I’m late. I have to go.”

Book on her lap in the bus, Effy breathes in and out and in and tries to concentrate on the words. Been sober for almost a year, but now she wonders if she’d slipped somehow without realizing—eyes won’t focus, head full of silent static.

The whole workday slips past her in a nebulous haze until Luca touches her elbow. Says in a rather un-boss-man like manner, “You look like you could use a drink.”

“How about dinner?”

Texts Naomi: “have to work late soz.” And then, “tell cook hello.”

Luca wants to fuck her, but she requires a raise and less work responsibilities.

“I’ll look into it,” his hand outstretched to shake hers.

Effy blows him in the toilet. Feels wholly sober again.

The flat’s dark when she gets back, and Cook is snoring lightly on their only couch. Her hand is almost entirely steady when she reaches down to touch his shaggy hair, his temple, and he turns his face instinctively into her touch.

“Eff?”

She doesn’t know what she’d been so afraid of. Everything’s exactly the same.

-

Girl shares a flat in London with Naomi. Effy takes the piss about him sleeping at the foot of her bed like a guard dog when he wakes up that morning with his spine in knots. Funny, that girl. He hadn’t forgotten, but sometimes he forgets.

“Not worth it to wake up to him humping your leg,” Naomi calls out from the kitchen.  
  
Pair of cheeky bints. Figures they ended up victims of gravity’s pull or what have you.

“Maybe we both just missed you,” Naomi fixes them tea after Effy leaves—got a cubicle to dash to, imagine. “And it drew us together.”

“Doubtful,” a small bit of self-deprecation goes a long way with the fairer sex, but Naomi’s eyes just narrow with irritation and the like.

“Did you miss me, too, you wanker?”

He touches the ends of her hair, brown now, longer. “Sure, Goldilocks.”

“You can’t stay here forever, you know,” business as usual.

“Yeah, 'course.”

“Think Effy’s taking it well, though. Her mum was afraid—”

“Afraid of what?” And after Naomi frowns, he lets the edge out of the voice a bit, gives her a grin, “The big, bad wolf?” Nothing to get hard over, yeah. Part of him and Effy, that’s all.

Naomi sighs, “Thought maybe you’d remind her of Freddie too much. Send her back to the loony bin.”

So, not about Cookie, then. Sorted.

He clasps one fist in the other, rubs at his knuckles. Been aching for someone, anyone, to dredge out all the old ghosts, maybe. But it seems useless now when the person isn’t Effy. When even Effy’s a cog in the machine, hunky-dory.

Don’t matter. Naomi leaves to protest against animal cruelty or detergent or some such before he has time to really spill his guts.

He spends most of the day poking through all their shit. Effy’s got a calendar with his name on it, day he got out. “Cook.” Right there under “Pills.” Blue ink. Never would have bothered with that sort of detail before, but these days he needs to take it all in. Fill his head up.

Wants to write “Freds” on every single square.

Instead, Cook crawls out the back window. Finds some work at a nearby pub and some work running drugs, and since Effy travailers during the day, they mostly end up sharing her bed with very little overlap.

-

“Eff,” a voice in her ear. Just a voice. Quiet now, quiet. “Effy.”

No light edging its way in through the window tells her that it’s Cook, home from work, sloshed. She feels the sheets pull tighter as he lies down on top of them next to her.

“Effy,” again.

“Piss off,” she digs her head into the pillow.

“You’re okay, yeah?” Effy waits for his touch, but it doesn’t come. “You’re good, I’m good, he’s good, all us suckers, yeah?”

“Quiet now,” she strikes out and covers his mouth with a careless hand.

“Need speak to you. Freddie—”

“Shut up.”

She winds around him tight, presses her face into Cook’s chest, and he is quiet, mostly. The sound of his wheezy breathing lulls her to sleep. Used to do that, before. She’d forgotten—

No, she never did.

Calendar on the wall says Monday. Fuck Monday. Monday, singular—dark day, her hand a fist in the hood of Cook’s jumper, head full of fog, an hour late to work and Luca only sneers. Effy smirks back and doesn’t answer a single phone. No food. No pills. Nothing in, nothing out.

She touches her legs, feels little prickles of hair through her stockings.

Takes Luca home with her. The sex is ghastly, but having the act to hold over his head and twist like he’s a puppet on strings is pleasure enough. Old habits. Still, she hadn’t quite known why she’d let the boss-man stay the night in her bed until she sees Cook standing in the doorway to her room.

There’s more light behind him than in front, but she can make out his features well enough. The tense line of his jaw, of his shoulders stretching out the thin fabric of his t-shirt, even as he leans casually against the doorframe. Pandora had once called him beautiful; the girl was sideways about a lot of things, but not that.

Take a picture, she wants to say.

“Take a picture,” a voice says. Just a voice. Could be anyone. “It’ll last longer.”

And then silence.

-

Whiskey stings, in its way. Sharp, in its way. Burns.

Donald tells him not to spend his day off pouring money back into his own place of employ. Would be a thing to ponder if Cook intended on paying. Tries to scout out a girl to get his dick damp with, and locks in on a pair of legs making their way towards him. When they come attached to Effy, he gives a good guffaw.

“What’s so funny?” she asks, eyes lined with purple. Pretty, that.

He holds a shot out for her, “Happy anniversary, babe.”

Wary, maybe, stare turning down to the drink now in her hand, “Anniversary of what?”

“Anything, Effy, for fuck’s sake, find the fun.” He doesn’t want to think about last night, much less three hundred sixty-five of them. Tells her, “Don't even know who you are anymore.”

She slings the shot back, and after that it’s sorta like old times.

“No,” her arms loose around his neck as they dance to no music, “exactly like old times.”

Fair enough, he thinks, and rubs at her mouth with his thumb until it’s bare of lipstick. Chases her around on lonely city streets until they’re both grimy and tired. Better, closer now, innit. They find an open liquor store, and the bloke behind the register eyes them cagily as Effy walks down each aisle, fingertips all over the merchandise.

“Oi,” the fucker calls out, “you break it, you buy it, hear me?”

But Effy won’t quit touching the bottles, eyes each one like there’s something bad in it. “How much money you got, Cook?”

Enough, yeah. Enough.

She tips a bottle of red until it crashes down and shatters at her feet. Cook slams some cash on the counter. Another bottle. More. Another.

“Remember the last time we did this?” she chuckles darkly.

Just because he’s drawing a blank don’t mean it never happened. Sounds right. Sounds real enough. He picks her up and carries her over all that broken glass and outta the place before the law shows up.

“Remember that night with the water balloons? Remember how tight I held your hand underneath my mum’s bed?” Girl struggles for breath when he puts her down, like she can’t stop the words, “Remember in the woods? Remember?” Nothing’s ringing, nothing’s right. “Remember the first time I told you I loved you?”

Cook wishes for rain. “Think you’re mistaking me for someone else, Eff.”

“No, I know you, I know who you are.”

“No.” His back bends, he covers his face with both hands, “No, you’re talking about someone else.”

Freddie.

“No,” she cries as if he’d said the name aloud. Maybe he did. Maybe it was all he ever said. “Stop it.”

Cook runs until even the air around him is the enemy. Stings in his lungs, in and out and in again.

Burns.

-

Naomi runs her a bath, and helps lower her into it with gentle hands, and tells her “you’re welcome,” even though Effy hadn’t said anything—won’t say anything, not ever again. Like old times. Well, older times. Wait—

“It’s fucked,” Effy’s voice is cracked and hoarse and out of her control. “It’s fucked, I fucked it up—I thought I was okay.”

“No one’s okay,” Naomi gives the word in question an air quote with her free hand.

On this they always seem to agree.

The wet washcloth Naomi presses along the lines of her face and shoulders is rough, but warm. Cleansing. Opens Effy up. “Wanna come in with me?” an edge of flirtation in the words.

Naomi strokes Effy’s hair, “I love you, too, you know.”

“Well, everybody loves me.”

“Not you,” Naomi’s voice is firm, and far too knowing. “Not really. But I do. So does Cook. Don’t be so fucking scared. Gets you nowhere—I’d know.”

That’s where Naomi’s wrong. It gets her right here. Effy soaks in the tub long after the water turns cold and still, save for her fingertips pressing ripples into the surface. Stays there until she’s shaking, shivering, teeth chattering, can’t think, ripples everywhere until they’re something else entirely, spilling over the edge and onto the floor.

And then she mops it all up, square by square of tile.

There’s a lump in the shape of a boy under the sheets on her bed, so Effy crawls under them to meet him. Less light filters through the pale, thin fabric than she’d imagined would as she lies on her side facing him.

Cook’s voice in the darkness, “I killed a man, Eff.”

So had she, hadn’t she? Hadn’t she? Bites her tongue. “I know.”

“Even after—even when I knew it was over, I couldn’t fuckin’ stop.”

He flinches at her touch, and she imagines how cold her skin must feel, “It’s okay.”

“No,” he presses his forehead to hers and exhales. “S’not. S’not, he’s fuckin’ dead.”

“It’s okay.”

“Say his name.”

“Foster.”

“No,” his hands cup her cheeks firmly; she can’t look away. “Not him.”

Tears squeeze out of her eyes when she shuts them tightly, hot and wet on her cheeks, “Freddie.”

Calms Cook down a bit; his grip loosens on her and a tiny, relieved sound escapes from his chest.

“S’okay,” she moves forward and speaks softly against the shell of his ear. “It’s okay.”

“Okay,” he mutters, and kisses her. 


End file.
